Being an avid horror fan, I’m not one to scare easily, but by god does One For Sorrow, Two For Joy give me the willies. From unnerving supernatural soprano to creepy clarinet, Second Moon of Winter’s début record certainly sets a menacing mood. Think The Gloaming secluded on Summerisle. Secret covens, hooded figures, and other such occultist imagery corrupts the mind when taking in the six tracks on the Cork trio’s horrifically exquisite album. To know the sweeping sounds and - properly - haunting atmospherics are created “predominantly on guitar and clarinet” (fed through a platter of pedals) makes the mind tremor. ‘Those Days Are Gone’ is a thing of such eerie beauty that to listen is to physically surrender to as much tension as enlightenment; The depths drilled in ‘Come Around’ make you think you may never surface again; ‘Ghandi Missed the Train’’s blood-curdling clarinet is exactly what the scientists in Close Encounters… would have played to the aliens if they wanted to scare the shit out of their visitors. Saying all this, it’s that voice that makes One For Sorrow, Two For Joy soar. If hell had a resident voice as resplendent as Kim Sheehan's, Dante would have found that inferno a far more inviting place with 'Cigarette' as its national anthem. Sonically sublime and otherworldly adventurous, One For Sorrow... is the best Irish release so far in 2015.

- 'One For Sorrow, Two for Joy' by Second Moon of Winter is out now- Second Moon of Winter play upstairs in The Oliver Plunkett, Cork on 18th February 2015- Support on the night comes from Irene Buckley